Vettel Gained 4 Kg During the Winter Break

Red Bull Racing not only decided to take on a different approach when building their car for the 2009 season but will also have maybe the only two drivers in the F1 roster not to have committed to drastic diets through the winter break.

After Australian Mark Webber admitted not having dieted through the winter, new teammate Sebastian Vettel revealed he doesn't think much about the “weight loss fever” within his fellow F1 drivers either. Not only that, but the man who brought Toro Rosso their first F1 win last year said he even gained 4 kilograms during the winter break.

“I weight 67 kilos with all my race gear on, and in the winter enjoyed many full dinner courses,” said Vettel in an interview to German tabloid Bild, while also confirming for Rheinische Post that “(Since the end of 2008) I have put on four kilos.”

The idea behind the weight-loss frenzy within the F1 drivers started as a result of the Kinetic Energy Recovery System being implemented in 2009. The unit, believed to weight somewhere around 30-35 kilograms, will give little options for teams' mechanics to redistribute ballast around an F1 car.

Although the KERS unit will be introduced in F1 this year, the FIA did not modify the weight limit of the car + driver accordingly. With the limit still 605 kg, the extra kilograms to help redistribute ballast could only come from weight loss. Since most of the car parts are made of standard lightweight material, the only extra weight could come from drivers' losing some of their own kilos.

However, Webber insisted that losing more weight would make him look stupid and argued he never had weight- or height-related racing problems before.

“I'm 75kg. I'm not going to try any harder to be any lighter because that's how I am and that's what weight I need to be. If someone wants me to be 70kg then get someone else to do it because at 70kg I wouldn't look very clever,” said Webber.